Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire SpaceX Loses 40 Satellites

Bet that was expensive. Next time, check the weather...


SpaceX says a geomagnetic storm just doomed 40 Starlink internet satellites

By Tariq Malik published about 9 hours ago

The satellites launched on Feb. 3, only to be hit by the storm a day later.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 49 Starlink satellites on Thursday (Feb. 3) from NASA's historic Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A day later, a geomagnetic storm above Earth increased the density of the atmosphere slightly, increasing drag on the satellites and dooming most of them.

"Preliminary analysis show the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe mode to begin orbit-raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of the satellites will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere," SpaceX wrote in an update Tuesday (Feb. 8).

Geomagnetic storms occur when intense solar wind near Earth spawns shifting currents and plasmas in Earth's magnetosphere, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center , which is operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This interaction can warm Earth's upper atmosphere and increase atmospheric density high enough above the planet to affect satellites in low orbits like SpaceX's new Starlink craft. Friday's geomagnetic storm came on the heels of a sun eruption on Jan. 30 that sent a wave of charged particles toward Earth that was expected to arrive on Feb. 2.

The 49 satellites SpaceX launched last week were deployed in an initial orbit that skimmed as low as 130 miles (210 kilometers) above Earth at its lowest point. SpaceX has said it intentionally releases Starlink batches in a low orbit so that they can be disposed of swiftly in case of a failure just after launch. That orbit design, it turned out, left the fleet vulnerable to Friday's geomagnetic storm.

"In fact, onboard GPS suggests the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50 percent higher than during previous launches," SpaceX wrote in its update. The satellites were then placed in a protective "safe mode" and commanded to fly edge-on "like a sheet of paper" to minimize drag effects as the company worked with the U.S. Space Force and the company LeoLabs to track them with ground-based radar, it added.

https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites-lost-geomagnetic-storm

Sounds like they were targeted because of their future capabilities

Targeted? Did you read any of the article?

I’m not gonna debate the subject but we have spacecraft with advanced weapons. The possible disclosure is why the left went nuts when Trump created the Space Force.

Musk has been bucking the globalist and they do not want him having a separate internet capability they can’t control.

Smells like fish !

Hello, lloyd's of london? This is Elon, we have a problem.

Good thing you won't debate it. You haven't a shred of proof.

No biggy - Elon just needs to sell a few share to cover the loss.

It's the Purple Ray of Ming the Merciless, an easy shot from Mongo. Don't worry, Zarkof's on it.

40x 250,000= 10 million. It would have cost Nasa 1 billion to put that stuff up.

"Read"? What is this "read", of which you speak?

It's a WiFi transmitter

And 15x longer to do it

A large magnetic storm from a large solar flare could throw the world back to the 1800's. It could knock power out to the entire US. It would take 6 months to a year to get power back on. People in big cities would starve to death. A government report back in about 2004 said about 100 million Americans would die in this event. Why? No power for canning, freezing, refrigeration of foods. No packaging of foods. Over half the vehicles wouldn't run due to fried computer chips in them, same with trucks. People going hungry in cities would form gangs to find food, and start killing people. Without fresh water and sewage in cities, people will get cholera.

The solar flare the other day, just knocked out some satellites. The one in 1858 knocked out the US and England's telegraph system.

No TV, Cell Phones, vehicles, water, sewage, power, possibly even natural gas. Back to the 1800's. One should store at least a 2 year supply of foods and rotate them to eat the oldest first. Also store some water or have a good couple of water filters to make potable water.

A nuke blown up 250 miles above Kansas can also knock out the power to the entire US. This could be done by a rogue country with nukes such as Iran.

Newt Gingrich tried to get congress to spend some money to reinforce the grid and buy spare parts in case this happened. No one believed him, same today. It is just a matter of time when the sun shoots out a giant solar flare. This flare the other day was a glancing blow to the earth, not straight on.

Shoulda checked the weather before they left……

Just keep on living like it were 1970 watching the SR71 with its 50’s technology. Head in the sand dumbass for sure.

You dummies just can’t accept anything greater than yourselves and refuse to believe the globalist science isn’t literally light years ahead of what you know about.

Thats the important point here.

Loco is an apropos name for you, Johhny. Give us one example. One.

You really think they would let private entities play with space Lincoln Logs if they weren’t leaps and bounds beyond that.

People really are stupid

So you're claiming that there are mysterious people with mysterious weapons in mysterious places for mysterious purposes, none of which have ever been detected or revealed. Gotcha.

You need to up the doses on those meds, bud.

Shut up an color fella, just like they want you too.

Sit outside and look at the sky in early am and you’ll see more than your computer screen.